I Dreamed of Avalon
by La Lune
Summary: ALT Reality!! My newest fic, just an idea that I had to get down. I want to try to finish 'In The Depths of Silence' before I get too involved with this one. A totally different experience than with ITDS, but still good!! Serena/Darien, please review!!
1. Prologue

Title: I Dreamed of Avalon  
Author: La Lune  
E-mail: la_lune86@hotmail.com  
Rating: PG-13  
Genre: Alternate Reality  
  
June 2001  
  
::Standard Disclaimers Apply:: If anything in this story resembles anything from any previous work by someone other than myself it is merely coincidental.   
  
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'What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.'  
-Aristotle  
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Prologue  
  
A cloud of dust filled the air as the breeze blew gently across the dry land which was the Morrison Foundation, located in Colorado. Dr. Serena Allan quickly jumped out of a hole in the ground, stood up and dusted off her faded jeans. She looked up in the direction of her companion, held her hand over her eyes to deflect the bright sunlight and smiled.  
  
"Okay I'm done, you were right there was nothing down there," she sighed in defeat, "unless you count dirt."  
  
"See this is what happens when you don't listen to me, you end up getting distracted and wasting time, in this case three hours."   
  
"Hey, how was I supposed to know there wasn't anything there, I mean it did look like something important."  
  
"And it ended up being nothing, the only thing you found was one of your dog's toys."  
  
"That's Ernie's fault, not mine. If you have a problem with it take it up with him." Serena gestured towards the ground where a little dog played with the item in question. Ernie was Serena's dog, and despite the fact that he was full grown, was extremely tiny, or as she liked to say, he was the pygmy of the dog world. When he was a puppy he had kidney problems, the medications he took to save his life stunted his growth and now he closely resembled a stuffed animal and could easily be held in someone's arms.  
  
Serena walked past Ernie and retrieved a brush off of a table under the tent that they had set up. She walked over to a tarp that had been spread across the ground, crouched down, and pulled it aside. Softly she brushed the dirt away from part of the semi visible skull that protruded out of the earth. Whenever she was working around something, like the Haplocanthosaurus that laid before her, she felt the unmistakable feeling of self fulfillment, and it felt good. Sighing she dropped the brush back onto the ground and stared off into the horizon, slightly turned away from the sun that still hung in the sky casting off heat. She felt a hand being placed on her shoulder and looked to her left where her best friend - Dr. Darien Stratton now sat. Their father's were good friends, and although their families got together quite often, they never had the chance to really meet each other until they were both in college.  
  
"I love this so much." Serena smiled towards him, despite her distaste for being dirty, sweaty, and smelling bad, she could never imagine herself doing anything but paleontology, or archeology for that matter.  
  
"You're probably the only girl I've ever met that likes to play around in the dirt." Darien laughed with his classically husky voice. "I don't know how much longer this can last though, woman, Dr. Wilson is most likely going to drop us when the funds start running low." Darien's tone was serious but he couldn't help but smirk when he saw the inflamed appearance her eyes took and had to dodge out of the way of her hand, which was flying through the air with malicious intent, he knew she hated when he called her 'woman', that's why he called her it. It was strange, the nickname had appeared during a conversation when the infamous line 'Hey woman, get me a sandwich!!' had somehow managed to weasel it's way in. Personally Darien thought it was hilarious and at the same time Serena didn't, in the end it stuck.   
  
"Okay first of all, I don't recall my name ever being 'woman' you male chauvinist pig, and second of all I am fully aware of that, we get stuck here dusting off a big dead thing in the ground while Dr. Wilson gets to oversee some of the best paleontological finds of the century, and yet in the end she still gets all the credit. Whoever said life was fair?"  
  
"No one, I think if anyone had they would have been struck down by a lightning bolt shortly thereafter. Why did we ever want to become paleontologists to begin with?" He cocked one of his dark eyebrows and made a quizzical expression that never failed to make her laugh.  
  
"I don't know about you but I wanted to get the hell out of Avalon." Avalon was a minuscule town in North Carolina, everybody knew everybody, and descent dental care was hard to come by. She liked to compare it to Lancaster, Pennsylvania minus the Amish, or Maycomb County from To Kill A Mockingbird minus Boo Radley, wait a minute scratch that, there was a man that supposedly lived down the street from her who she had never seen in all the years her family had lived there. It was a coastal town so if you didn't like seafood , it was not the place for you. Despite the fact that Serena's father was a wealthy businessman he insisted that his family live as far away from what he had to deal with everyday as possible, which meant anywhere that wasn't New York. Well he certainly got what he wished for. She had to admit it though, if it wasn't for dull, bland Avalon she wouldn't be in the position she was currently in. Despite Avalon's lack of many of the city-like qualities Serena enjoyed, she had to admit, she liked it there. The library there was ancient, and held the most books in one place she had probably ever seen in her life. That's where she found her first book on dinosaurs, later on she realized how truly important that book really was.  
  
Darien on the other hand was from New York, and by god did Serena envy him. His father was similar to hers, a wealthy businessman. Only he was the 'big city' type, while her father was the 'open country' type, why his offices were in New York was beyond her and she often reminded him of it. Come to think of it, she had always thought Darien would follow in his father's footsteps, why the hell was here in Colorado helping her dig up something that has been dead for millions upon millions of years?  
  
"What made you want to do it?" Confusion was clearly noted in the tone of her voice, she didn't want to admit she got confused a lot, as a matter of fact it was far from the truth, Serena had a very sharp mind, which was easily noted by her sharp sense of humor.  
  
"I don't know. When I first started college I went to business school and planned on taking my father's position when he stepped down, and I probably still will. I noticed that I already knew everything I was being 'taught'. One day I heard your father bragging about you and your career choice, and the fact that not only did you want to be just a paleontologist but eventually an archeologist as well, well it peaked my interest." There wasn't a hint of his usual sarcasm in his voice, as a matter of fact he sounded like he was telling the truth, for once. "And I remember when I asked you why you wanted to go through so many years of college for a career that doesn't pay too extravagantly, especially when you could have been able to do so much more, and you said -"   
  
"You only live once...." Serena let the sentence softly trail off, she remembered the first time she had said it, it had been her argument when people had tried to persuade her to choose another career. They had all thought she was joking at first, she couldn't blame them. She was known throughout the town, if not the whole state of North Carolina, for some of the stupid stunts she had pulled.   
  
April Fool's Day was always the best, one year she arrived at home (she had insisted that he father didn't pick her up) dressed up like a full blown prostitute, including patent leather black boots that went up to her mid thigh, flame red tube top that was two sizes too small, and black leather skirt (also two sizes too small) that was literally millimeters away from exposing her bottom. The look on her father's face...priceless. Then there was the year in which she hadn't seen her family in nearly three years, in order to get her degrees faster she worked nonstop for maybe but probably more than eight years. Anyway, she asked her friend, who for reasons unbeknownst to her just so happened to have a 'prosthetic stomach' which when worn made you look very pregnant, if she could borrow it. Her friend knew fully well what Serena planned to do and complied before the question left Serena's mouth. So with her friend stationed in the bushes on the side of her house in full view of the front door and armed with a camera, Serena waddled up the front porch steps and rang the door bell. What happened next could only be described as 'classic', her father apparently believed he was safe (she had missed April Fool's by over a month) and had invited a good chunk of her close family and friend's over for a little 'Welcome Home' party. The second the door opened Serena was met with a barrage of people, she watched as if everything was in slow motion as their smiles faded into looks of pure mortification. Her father's eyes bugged out of his head (giving her a reason to call him 'Popeye' from that moment on, which she did), her mother's face became as green as Astroturf , and her seventy-five year old grandmother passed out, her grandfather on the other hand burst out into hysterics, well at least she had one positive response. Once she had convinced everyone that she really wasn't pregnant and it was just a joke, her family finally learned to expect the unexpected with Serena, it was about time.   
  
Darien had been present at that fiasco, of course the second she walked in he had just taken a drink of...something, and nearly choked to death. Her father became furious and refused to talk to her for the forty-eight hours she was there, as a matter of fact everyone refused to talk to her, they just didn't know how to take a joke. The only one that actually talked to her was Darien, he personally didn't care about her little 'joke', despite the fact that they knew who each other was they hadn't really seen each other since Serena was eight. Darien had attempted to show off the fact that he was going to some expensive business school until he asked Serena what she was doing and went off about dinosaurs, archeology, and a lot of other things he didn't understand, all he could do was smile and nod. It interested him though, she was so devoted to these things he knew nothing of. So there he was going to school and pretty much learning things he already knew like the back of his hand, and there she was doubling up on her amount of college, literally living there all year long, just to do something that meant so much to her. After their conversation he literally felt like a light bulb had gone off in his head. Soon after he left school and began to follow a path very similar to Serena's.  
  
And now here they sat under the blistering sun in Colorado by themselves killing time. A comfortable silence settled over them until Darien cautiously spoke up.  
  
"My dad called me the other day, about the business...he wanted to know if I was ready to -"  
  
"No Darien, you can't do that! You can't just leave me here and move back to New York and take over your father's job, you have spent years in college in order to do this, how can you just give it up after one phone call. I thought you loved this as much as I do..." Serena felt like someone had just slapped her, hard, she was devastated, Darien couldn't leave, he just couldn't. He had worked so far to get up to this point and he was going to throw it all away because his dad called him? Serena found her devastation unnerving but was even more disturbed by a sudden moisture in her eyes. Oh no, she was starting to cry.  
  
"I do!" Darien quickly interjected, "Believe me Serena, this is the job of my dreams, I'm just saying that one day my father's going to die, or retire and I'm the only one who he wants to follow in his footsteps." Darien felt terrible for making Serena cry, she defined herself as a 'non-crier'. He remembered a time in which she had told him when she saw Titanic she had felt absurd sitting in an audience made up primarily of women, all of which who were bawling their eyes out, and her with dry eyes laughing when the one man jumps off the back of the ship when it is sinking, hits one of propellers and does a flip before plunging to his death. She was so upset that she didn't cry that she went back and saw the movie eleven more times, yet despite her best efforts, not a tear was shed.  
  
"What did you say?" Her voice trembled fearing the answer, they were probably the four hardest words she had ever said in her life. She felt Darien snake an arm around her shaking shoulders and draw her near his body. He moved his head down and whispered into her ear.  
  
"I said no." Serena stopped breathing for a second as she processed what he had said, 'He said no!?'. Serena's eyes widened dramatically and she about to smile when she realized something, despite the fact that he had said no, that was only for now, somewhere down the line his dad was going to call him and he would accept his offer. "What's wrong woman? You aren't your usual cheery self, aren't you happy I'm staying?"  
  
Serena overlooked Darien's over confident statement and the fact that he called her 'woman' and got straight to the point. "Of course I'm not happy! Even though you said 'no' that's just this time. Darien, you know your dad isn't too thrilled about you ditching business school and on a whim becoming a paleontologist, he's going to try as hard as he can to get you back in an office in New York. And I know one day, when you're married and have a family you're going to get sick of being away from them so often and you'll wait either for your father to call again, or you'll call him yourself, and your answer won't be 'no'. Once you leave...I'll never see you again."  
  
"What do you mean we'll never see each other again?"  
  
"You'll be in New York and I'll be all over the world doing this." She threw her hands in the air and gestured towards the things around them. "Darien, the last time I saw my family was when I graduated, that was way over a year ago. Once you'll leave...I'll never see you again."   
  
Darien was about to deny it but after thinking about her last thought for a moment changed his mind. Damn, she's right. A smile spread across his face as he quickly got an idea that would hopefully turn Serena's mood around. "Hey, how about this, I promise that I will never get married or take my father's job until I'm old."  
  
Serena took a brief moment to absorb Darien's 'promise'. When he's old! She thought to herself, when I was younger I thought twenty-five was old, at least that was until I turned twenty-five. All the same though, Darien had caught Serena off guard, causing her eyes to grow large and her eyebrows to raise. She smacked him in the arm in mock anger. "You retard, you cannot promise me something like that, it's just crazy."  
  
"Hey I promise on my mother's grave that I will never get married or leave this job until I become much more advanced in years, and I mean much more."  
  
Serena smacked him again, last time she'd checked, his mother was very much alive. "You're going to regret you have ever said that Darien, I swear I'm going to hold you to this."  
  
"As you notice," He pointed to himself dramatically, "I don't care because...I meant every word I said."  
  
Serena rolled her eyes as she stood up and dusted any dirt off of her clothing. As she began to walk away she turned back to him. "I want this 'promise' of yours written down with both of our signatures to validate it. I swear, no I promise you will come to regret this, just wait."   
  
The only thing Darien could do was smirk as he watched Serena walk into the trailer that been deposited a little ways away of the large tent that covered a good portion of their tools, Ernie trailed behind her. Oh boy, he thought amusedly, this should be interesting.  
  
To be continued....  
  
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Author's Notes: Well there you have it, my brand new story. This won't be angsty like In The Depths of Silence but it's still going to be a romance, of course. I hope everyone enjoys reading it, I'm trying to research stuff for this one (unlike In The Depths of Silence), hopefully it shows. I don't know if it's possible for her dog to have been stunted by kidney problems, I just thought that if it could happen to Gary Coleman it could happen for a dog. All comments/questions/suggestions are welcome as always. Please review, I really want to know what you guys think of this!!!!!  
  
Until next time...  
-La Lune   
  



	2. Chapter 1

Title: I Dreamed of Avalon  
Author: La Lune  
E-mail: la_lune86@hotmail.com  
Rating: PG-13  
Genre: Alternate Reality  
  
June 2001  
  
::Standard Disclaimers Apply::  
  
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Last time on 'I Dreamed of Avalon'  
  
Prologue:  
  
The only thing Darien could do was smirk as he watched   
Serena walk into the trailer that been deposited a little ways away of the   
large tent that covered a good portion of their tools, Ernie trailed behind   
her. Oh boy, he thought amusedly, this should be interesting.  
  
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'What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies.'  
-Aristotle  
  
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Chapter 1  
  
Darien arched an eyebrow as he watched a very uncomfortable Serena walk towards him with a cell phone, more precisely his cell phone, in her hand. He had just gotten back from a little shopping trip in the nearest town, merely out of boredom of course, and had left   
Serena to hold down the fort.  
  
"What's wrong woman? You look like you just found out you   
have the plague or something."  
  
"Nice hat, reminds me of Crocodile Dundee." She smirked   
over at him, referring to the hat which adorned his head, attempting to hide her previously bothered appearance. It didn't work though, she had completely ignored his question and was attempting to change the subject, not to mention didn't say anything about him addressing her as 'woman'.  
  
"I was thinking more along the lines of Indiana Jones, by the way, why do you have my phone?" Serena didn't have her own cell phone, she was convinced that using one caused brain cancer, and wouldn't come within a twenty foot radius of one. And now she was holding one in her hand.  
  
"Oh this?" She held up her right hand that held the offending object.  
  
"No the other phone in your right hand." He rolled his eyes irritatedly, this conversation was getting old fast as far as he was concerned.   
  
"Well you just got a phone call a few minutes ago, while you were still gone, and I answered it." Serena was acting out of character for probably the first time in her life, who had called?  
  
"Oh really? Who was it?"  
  
"My dad."  
  
Darien was taken slightly aback, her dad had called, yikes. Boy, was he glad he wasn't there when he called. He couldn't fathom what he wanted to talk to him about though. "What did he want?"  
  
And this my friends is where it got interesting, Serena burst out in hysterics. This is when Darien definitely knew something bad had happened concerning this particular phone call. Whenever something bad happened Serena would start to laugh before she told him about it.  
  
"It's pretty funny when you think about it, as a matter of fact it's hilarious." She attempted to keep her outburst in check, attempted is a key word, it only lasted for a few seconds.  
  
"Get to the point Serena what did he want?"  
  
Suddenly Serena became silent and the uncomfortable look appeared on her face once more. "First of all I just want to say it's not my fault....."  
  
"I'm sure it is."  
  
"Anyway my dad called while you were gone...."  
  
"We've already established that."  
  
"And you know how I hate cell phones, but it just wouldn't stop ringing and I was about to throw it into a wall, but I answered it anyway despite the risk of brain cancer....."  
  
"Serena stop dawdling, get to the point."  
  
"Mydadthinkswe'resleepingtogether."   
  
It all came out as one word but Darien's ears picked up every   
rushed word. He stopped breathing and he felt for sure that his eyes were about to pop out of their sockets.  
  
"You're kidding."  
  
Serena swallowed the lump that had formed in her throat   
uneasily, and nervously began to study the ground. "Actually, no."  
  
"Well you denied it of course, right? You told him the truth,   
that that would never happen and never has?" Darien searched Serena's face for an answer, and the way she wouldn't look him in the eye worried him.   
  
"I tried but, you know me, the second he made such an   
outlandish accusation, I mean me and you, no way. But I mean at the moment the idea caught me as funny so I...uh...started laughing." Serena noticed the strange look on Darien's face, and didn't like it one bit. "And of course he took it the wrong way, don't get me wrong I  
tried to tell him the truth, but he wouldn't believe me, well at least not after that."  
  
Darien stared unbelievingly at her, why was this happening to   
him? If her father thought they were sleeping together then that meant his parents were going to find out within the hour as well. "So now he   
thinks..."  
  
"Yeah he does."  
  
"Can it get any worse?" Darien turned his face up towards the   
sky like he was expecting to be struck down by lightning or something.  
  
"Actually it does." Serena smiled sheepishly at Darien's   
puzzled face, "Remember we're both flying up to New York next week to meet up with our parents for a little vacation."  
  
Darien's eyes widened even more as he absorbed the most   
resent bit of information that had been thrown in his face. "Oh no...oh no, I completely forgot about that. What are we going to do?"  
  
"I've been thinking about that for awhile now and the best I   
can do is to act like nothing happened for now, go to New York like we planned, and once we're there we will both calmly and rationally explain to our parents that a terrible misconception has been made and we'll clear everything up."  
  
"You know what? That actually makes sense. But you forgot   
to mention the simple fact that your father, not to mention the rest of your family, doesn't really trust/believe anything you say thanks to some of your previous antics."  
  
"But Darien I didn't say anything this time, he just 'inferred'   
that I was sleeping with you, not to mention he caught me completely off guard, I was expecting a telemarketer or a vengeful girlfriend or ... something."  
  
"Serena from this moment on I completely ban you from ever   
touching my cell phone again, for the rest of eternity." With that Darien snatched his cell phone out of Serena's grasp and chucked it off into the distance. "Do you know how many messes you've gotten me into, and all of them have been caused by you're big mouth."  
  
"Hey stop acting like it's all my fault, and besides my big   
mouth has gotten me into plenty of predicaments too...did I ever tell you about when my boyfriend in college proposed to me?"  
  
"You had a boyfriend in college, and he proposed to you!?"  
  
"I'll take that as a no...well anyway when I was still in college,   
I think I was like twenty-three or twenty-four at the time, I had a boyfriend. After awhile I generally got bored with him, he was an eighteen year old frat boy at heart and never seemed to grow up, so naturally I planned to dump him, nicely of course. Well apparently he was thinking the complete opposite, and it ruined all of my carefully thought out plans for how to dump him. I had it all planned we would go for a walk and I would explain to him how I felt and how I saw our 'relationship', sadly it didn't work. We went on a walk through one of the rose gardens in the park and of course right off the bat I knew   
something was up, the whole time we were there my mind was just screaming 'TOO ROMANTIC!! TOO ROMANTIC!!', and of course knowing me in my extremely nervous state tripped over everything humanly possible. I was about to go into my planned speech when all of a sudden he wasn't standing next to me, he was kneeling on one knee in front of me. Then he went into some obviously pre-planned speech about how much he loved me, etc., etc., etc., I swear if he hadn't been holding my hand I would have walked away and left him there, but sadly I was stuck there listening to him. It only got worse though, I tried to stop him before he made a fool of himself but it didn't work, and before I knew it I had a ring shoved into my face. That's when the worst thing of all happened - I started laughing, but not just a normal laugh of happiness, if there is one, I mean I went into full blown   
hysterics. It was funny though, you see we had only been dating for a   
month and he was proposing to me! I wasn't really paying attention to   
what I was doing and accidentally blurted out what I was supposed to   
tell him, only I forgot my perfectly planned speech. So not only did I   
laugh at him when he proposed, but I dumped him very   
unceremoniously."   
  
"What did you do after you 'broke the news'?"  
  
"Oh I turned around in the opposite direction and high-tailed it   
the hell out of there."  
  
"Ok, and after that you two never spoke again, the end. Am I   
correct?"  
  
"Actually no, he became furious, thought I had been cheating   
on him or something, and slept with the nearest female, who may I add happened to be a stripper. And no that's not where it ends, it gets even better. It turns out that his retaliation backfired," Serena couldn't help but snicker at this part, "he got the girl pregnant."  
  
"Geez woman, where the hell do you meet these people?"   
  
"It's more like, how do these people find me?"  
  
Darien smiled and wrapped an arm around Serena's shoulders,   
"So tell me do you know what's happening with lover boy now?"  
  
"As a matter of fact yes, shortly after he found out about the   
stripper being pregnant he dropped out of college and hastily married her. Currently I believe he's an auto mechanic in West Virginia, and if I may add recently divorced from his now ex-wife. He is also fighting for custody of his four year old son, who has to be the ugliest kid I've ever seen."  
  
"And how exactly do you know all of this stuff? And don't   
you think you're being a little cruel concerning the kid?"   
  
"Let's just say I know this stuff and leave it at that, and believe   
me Darien, his kid looks like a monkey."  
  
"I could say something really mean right now, referring to you,   
but out of the kindness of my heart I won't."  
  
"You know Darien, with you being my 'secret' lover and all, I   
don't appreciate such hurtful comments." Serena smirked up at him, and added a little wink for effect.  
  
"Serena, just shut up."  
  
  
To be continued.........  
  
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Author's Notes: I must say I am quite proud of how quickly I got this chapter out, even though it isn't as long as the prologue. Also I must admit this chapter isn't too good...but it does serve the purpose it was meant for. This one was supposed to be anyway, it really is just supposed to introduce a situation which will effect Darien and Serena in the next couple of chapters, believe me it will get interesting. Oh yeah, in probably every chapter you'll see Serena tell some sort of story about   
something that happened in her past, she has a lot of them. Just wait to  
see what kind of job she had as a teenager (he he!). As always feedback   
would be wonderful, please REVIEW!!!!  
  
Until next time...  
-La Lune   
  
  
  
  
  



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